Gender and song singing

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: Tootler
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 03:58 PM

JHW Wrote

So in 'Black is the colour of my true love's hair' I will always sing 'his' and think the song has the strength to make it obvious that its words are being sung by a woman even when I (a man) sing it.

I sing "her". I'm not sure that I entirely agree with your assertion here.

While browsing You Tube last night I came across this version by Cara Dillon. She actually sings "her" which I did find strange.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 15 Oct 11 - 09:14 AM

I don't find it strange at all - great sound, all that matters to me.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: Tootler
Date: 15 Oct 11 - 09:33 AM

A bit OT, but I thought it over arranged.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: tonyteach1
Date: 15 Oct 11 - 10:20 AM

But he was rich and famous !

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST,Amber
Date: 15 Oct 11 - 10:28 AM

Listened to the version of Jolene on youtube. Yes, point taken. It was good.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: JHW
Date: 16 Oct 11 - 05:30 AM

In 'Black is the colour' maybe its just me that feels strongly it is a woman singing. I can't give a reason and indeed I've heard far more women than men sing it, recorded and live.
It was the version in 'Folk Songs of The Americas', A.L.Lloyd and Isabel Aretz de Ramón y Rivera, that got me singing the song as there it is 'But black is the colour of my true love's hair' indicating the reason for the lament 'I wish the day were past and gone, my love and I could be as one'
But that's another story

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST,Dave (Bridge)
Date: 16 Oct 11 - 06:37 AM

OOPS, slippy fingers. I find it very strange when a female starts 'Oh me name is Davey Lowsen' spoils the whole picture for me. Sorry.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: Often
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 05:31 AM

At the end of the day I think it comes down to whether or not the person singing it pulls it off.
I suspect that between the songs themselves and our own expectations and biases that some songs will tend to sound better sung by one gender or another, but I really don't think it can be treated like it was a law of physics.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: JHW
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 05:40 AM

And for me it needs a woman to sing 'Patience Kershaw','The Recruited Collier' and other pit tragedies lamented by the widows. I'm trying to think the song where they laid out the bodies in The Royal and 'it was only by the belt he wore I knew which one was mine'.
Changing to third person (going back to earlier) to get out of a gender problem has also an effect on the perspective of the song.
Sheila Miller's Sidmouth Ballad Sessions used to have rules of engagement. The singer could not be a participant in the story of the ballad. The ballad must be third person.
The detachment gives a different feel to the action. (imho and again, another story)

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 05:56 AM

"The Recruited Collier" starts with a person of indeterminate sex asking the Collier's sweetheart what ails her & where her dashing Jimmy is: the rest of the song, her reply, thus forms part of a dialogue, with her response in virtual quotation marks. So I see no reason why a man cannot sing it with complete conviction.

A way round the problem, for those who are bothered by it, is slight emendation at the start: so that, for example, "I am a young girl and my fortune is bad; I've always been courted by the wagoner's lad" ~ could be rendered as "There was [or It is of] a young girl and her fortune was bad. She said 'I've always been courted...'" &c.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 06:15 AM

"I find it very strange when a female starts 'Oh me name is Davey Lowsen' spoils the whole picture for me. Sorry."

I know what you mean, but that very strangeness, or spoiling of the picture, is one of the things I've come to value and enjoy about trad songs.

The picture gets "spoiled" quite often in the course of many a song, simply cos the narrator/viewpoint switches so often, like in a movie.

Sometimes when you're hearing a love song, and the gender of the singer and the gender of the addressee are unspecified for a few verses, when you finally hear a "he" or "she" it can be a bit of a jolt, but that can be a good thing, i think.

Yes, it changes a song from direct experience to a story, something that happened a long time ago, to people utterly different (& yet not so different) long dead.

I always liked the fact that the Star Wars movies began with the rather wistful introduction "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away". A bit Brechtian really.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 06:21 AM

Always puts a smile on my face to hear Ewan MacColl's bearded tenor belting out: "And I myself a thumpin' quean, wha danced the reel o' Stumpie O".

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 06:38 AM

"In 'Black is the colour' maybe its just me that feels strongly it is a woman singing. I can't give a reason and indeed I've heard far more women than men sing it, recorded and live."

Have you heard Pete Seeger's (a capella) version? I think it's my favorite recorded performance of that song. Sends shivers down my spine.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: JHW
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 04:25 PM

Heading down town on the bus it dawned on me that 'The Recruited Collier' starts with that one line from that other person! Ingenious.
Guest yes a fine version from Pete Seeger and a lift at the end of the melody I haven't heard elsewhere. So many versions

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 05:42 PM

"Black is the Color." I have always assumed that it was a man singing, but essentially it seems sort of "unisex" to me and adapts easily with a minor change or two in accessories, depending on which gender is singing it.

For example, "the daintiest hands" implies that it's a man singing, "the strongest hands" that it's a woman. Along with coordinated changes in pronouns. I've heard it sung both ways, depending on who was singing it, and it works equally well either way.

Pretty good run-down on "(But) Black is the Color (Colour)" here on Wikipedia, some of which deals with the gender issue.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 06:16 PM

"I find it very strange when a female starts 'Oh me name is Davey Lowsen' spoils the whole picture for me. Sorry."

If you're bothered about that, shouldn't you be even more bothered about the narrator in that song being dead? How you wrap you brain around that is up to you. One option could be to presume reincarnation, which could be to either a man or a woman. But it's easier just to accept that someone is presenting the story on behalf of the deceased Davey.

Richard

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 18 Oct 11 - 01:52 PM

Two times I've seen a play called 'Fully Committed.' (We liked it so much we took friends to see it the second time.)

This play has only one character, and out-of-work actor who answers the phone in the basement of a trendy restaurant. He plays himself and he plays every person calling him on the phone. I forget the actor's name, but he was incredible.

He could be a man, a woman, a Japanese tourist, the boss, the British hostess upstairs ("I'm sorry, darling, but the staff meals have all been eaten."), a supermodel's gay personal assistant, his own dad, anybody. It was amazing to see the new ways he spoke, moved, and held himself as he became the new person. That is the essence of acting.

Imagination is basic to entertainment, and it's perfectly possible to imagine that a person is a member of the opposite sex. Heck, I could imagine I was an octopus, if I tried hard enough.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 26 Oct 12 - 09:32 PM

The chorus of "The Sheik Of Araby" is gender-specific.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 26 Oct 12 - 09:34 PM

And I don't have a problem with it.

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 03:42 AM

"He fades away"........written by a man from a womans point of view and sung by both women and men.

If a song has a good, strong story line then gender is secondary, except perhaps for songs such as "My husband's got no courage in him". Important is whether or not you can get behind the story. Try "The Female Soldier"........

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 10:07 AM

I sing mostly Irish songs here(England) and back home in Ireland and I always believe, and it's my experience, that Irish ballads are sung the same by either sex i.e no need to change the wording from he to she etc

Subject: RE: Gender and song singing
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Oct 12 - 11:14 AM

Don ~~ My Husband's Got No Courage In Him also gets round the problem by being narrated by a person of indeterminate sex who reports what s/he heard the woman singing.

As I walked out one summer's morning
To view the trees and leaves a-springing
I saw two maidens standing standing by
And one of them her hands was wringing
    Chorus Oh dear oh
    Oh dear oh
    My husband's got no courage in him


So not a good example here?

~M~